International patent publication no. WO 2005/073685 A1 discloses a linear pressure sensor. In one application, the sensor is incorporated into a lanyard that has characters or symbols printed on the surface, representing controls for an audio playback device. A user can interact with the sensor by stroking and/or pressing the characters or symbols, and by such action control functions of the audio playback device such as play functions and volume control.
A fabric sensor in the form of a keyboard for a portable electronic processing device is disclosed in international patent publication no. WO 01/75572 A2. Graphics corresponding to keys are displayed and a user can interact with the keyboard by pressing in the region of a key, and by such action send alphanumeric characters to the portable electronic processing device. It is described that in one application a dynamic movement, such as the sweeping of a finger across the keyboard, could be used to shift from lower case to upper case letters.